The Problem with GQ’s “Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?”
The GQ article, “Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?,” is tangentially about the quest of a woman from Texas to hunt and kill an elephant in Botswana, but it is mostly about how the author, Wells Tower, feels about a woman from Texas hunting and killing an elephant in Botswana. It is also about the author’s unwavering conviction that elephant hunts are manifestly good, especially for locals, whom Tower sees as being at the mercy of elephants until wealthy Western hunters come and kill the marauding animals on their behalf.
Curiously absent in a narrative that portrays locals as the beneficiaries of these elephant hunts, are the locals themselves. In a story that runs over 7000 words, not once does Tower quote a Botswanan or even allude to the possibility that he spoke to one. He doesn’t quote any Botswanan farmers, even though he beseeches his readers to think of the “Botswana [sic] farmer who wakes up to find that elephants have munched a full year’s worth of crops” before we judge these elephant hunts. Nor does he seem to speak with any of the locals who come to cut up and parcel out the elephant meat after the elephant is killed, in order to determine whether they share Tower’s view that these elephant hunts are good for them.
The absence of Botswanan voices means that his account of an elephant hunt — as partially a mission to rescue hapless Africans from marauding elephants and partially a mission to save hapless villagers from starvation — is never challenged. His readers, therefore, are left to assume that these hunts are unequivocally beneficial to people who live near the elephants.
The absence of Botswanan voices also allows the insidious narrative that Africans passively wait for white foreigners to come rescue them to go unchallenged.
The colonial construct that black Africans are helpless without white saviors is so deeply ingrained in our collective Western imagination that Tower seems incapable of seeing that, rather than being unable to help themselves without the intervention of white foreigners, there are reasons outside of their implied helplessness that prevents “villagers” from killing elephants on their own.
In essence, locals are forbidden from hunting these elephants (and other animals), and the threat and the use of violence has been implemented to ensure they abide by the dictates of the Botswanan government. (A ban on trophy hunting purportedly went into effect in Botswana at the beginning of the year, but according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, “Hunting in registered game ranches will not be affected by the ban.”)
Unfortunately, it seems to be wholly lost on Tower that locals can’t kill these elephants, not because they are incapable of doing so, but because they would be branded as poachers, and consequently, harmed or killed. Had he spoken with any locals, perhaps he would have been able to conceive, or at least entertain, an alternative narrative other than elephant hunts are altruistic acts that benefit locals. (Perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part, but speaking with locals might have also led Tower to ask how Botswanans feel about the fact that foreigners are allowed to shoot elephants they are not allowed to shoot themselves.)
My strongest objection to this article is the way Tower reacts when Jeff Rann, the professional hunter who serves as a guide during the hunt, shares a story about his participation in the killing of three alleged poachers.
As Tower explains, Rann, whom he reverently describes as “the most perfect exemplar I have ever met of Hemingway’s speak-softly-and-shoot-big-things-without-being-a-blowhard-about-it masculine ideal,” led members of the Botswana Defence Force to a camp where three people resided that Rann alleged were hunting elephants on the million acres he leased from the Botswanan government. According to Rann, “We went into camp, and there were two old guys and one kid about 16 years old. The agents just opened up on them. Killed the two old guys outright. The one they shot eleven times, the other they shot fourteen times. The kid took off running, but they shot him a couple of times in the back.”
The following exchange then takes place between Rann and Tower:
Q. So you, like, saw three guys get shot and killed?
A. Yeah.
Q. Whoa. Wow. What was that like?
A. Didn’t bother me.
Q. Wow, really? Weird. Do you think that’s because maybe you’ve seen so many animals killed over the years that seeing the poachers get shot, it’s, you know, just another animal?
[Patient silence during which Rann seems to be restraining self from uttering the word “pussy” in conjunction with visiting journalist.]
A. I don’t know. Hard to say. Those guys [illegally] killed a lot of animals. It pissed me off.
The only thing more astonishing and disturbing than the glibness with which Rann describes the death of a child is Tower’s own glib reaction to Rann’s story and his concession that perhaps Rann’s indifference to the killing of three human beings is because they are “just another animal.” (His vulgar willingness to feminize himself with the crass term “pussy” when faced with Rann’s masculine disapproval for daring to ask questions, even though the questions are profoundly superficial, is also astounding.)
This anemic exchange with Rann left me with the discomforting suspicion, as obscene as the suspicion may be, that perhaps for Tower (and for the scores of readers who angrily denounced the article for its rather sympathetic view of elephant hunting, but made no mention of the extra legal killings of three people), African lives are worth less, and mean less, when measured against the lives of elephants. But I think Tower’s reaction to the death of the alleged poachers is far knottier than my initial suspicion.
Shying away from the death of the alleged poachers allows Tower to avoid thinking about why poor people are subject to extrajudicial killings for doing the same thing rich foreigners get to do in Botswana. It also means that he doesn’t have to reflect on the neo-colonial implications of these elephant hunts. Nor does he have to seriously entertain the idea that Rann’s support of the culling of elephants may not stem from a conservationist impulse, but a wish to preserve his very lucrative hunting business. Because pondering any of these issues would have undermined the undisguised thrill Tower clearly felt being on a safari with Rann — a man whom Tower obviously sees as the embodiment of the heroic and romantic Great White Hunter that Hemingway glorified and reified in prose. But clinging to the musty fantasy of the heroic white bwana (master), pacifying and paradoxically saving nature in ways natives and those less masculine than him could never dream of doing, means that questions that should have been posed to Rann go unasked, such as:
1. What proof did you provide to the military (the Botswana Defence Force) that the three people who were killed were poachers?
2. How often do you, as a private individual, direct the military to camps knowing that the military will summarily execute people?
3. Don’t you think that there are moral issues surrounding the summary execution of three people, one you yourself describe as a fleeing child, for killing elephants?
4. I did a quick calculation and you’ve made roughly ten million dollars from these elephant hunts alone. (According to the article, Rann has led 200 elephant hunts; each hunt costs $60,000, of which at least $10,000 is supposed to go to the government, so Rann makes $50,000 per hunt.) How come it’s okay for you to make millions of dollars off of killing elephants, but it’s wrong for other people to do so?
5. What’s the difference between a poacher and a hunter?
Asking Rann any of these questions would have fulfilled the bare minimum requirements of Tower’s journalistic duty. But rather than questioning Rann, Tower breathlessly tells his readers that Rann is “lethally competent and incredibly understated and cool, even when he’s telling swashbuckling stories, such as the time he nearly got killed by a leopard.” The fact that Tower also uses the story of Rann’s participation in the summary execution of the three alleged poachers as an example of Rann’s “swashbuckling stories,” demonstrates how deeply Tower surrendered to a creaky sentimentality for a by-gone era where “real” men shot first and asked questions later, if they asked questions at all.
As a result, what Tower ultimately ends up writing is not a story about an elephant hunt, but a hagiography that’s masquerading as a piece of journalism. For you see, the real star of the piece is not Robyn Waldrip, the woman from Texas who gets to shoot her elephant, or even the unsuspecting elephant itself, but Jeff Rann.
For Tower, Rann’s perpetuation of violence is synonymous with virility and bravery, while his own doubts and squeamishness are “pantywaist.” After all, saying that there’s something disquieting about celebrating a man who uses the military to kill people with what looks like impunity just sounds like “pussy” talk.
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